By the afternoon, the twins were asleep.
Ryan had taken the laundry upstairs, leaving me alone in the living room.
I could hear him opening and closing drawers as he put away the girls' clothes.
The sound reminded me of all the small things he had missed while he was away.
The first time Ava rolled onto her side.
The night Mia refused to settle unless I walked around the bedroom with her.
The mornings when I drank cold coffee because one baby would wake the moment I sat down and the other would begin crying before I could finish feeding her sister.
I had wanted Ryan home for all of it.
Not because I couldn't manage alone.
I had managed.
I wanted him home because these were our children, and I wanted us to share the ordinary parts of raising them.
Now he was home, and I didn't know what sharing meant anymore.
I got up to clear the coffee table.
There were two burp cloths, a pacifier, and the small notebook where I wrote down the girls' feeding times.
I picked up the notebook and flipped through it.
The first pages were filled with dates and times.
Ava had eaten at six.
Mia had woken at six twenty.
Ava had slept for forty minutes.
Mia had cried for almost an hour.
As the weeks passed, my handwriting changed.
At first, the notes were neat.
Later, the numbers leaned sideways, and some entries were written so quickly that I could barely read them.
I remembered making those notes in the middle of the night, sitting on the nursery floor with one baby in my arms and the other asleep beside me.
I had wanted to tell Ryan every detail when he called.
Sometimes he had listened carefully.
Sometimes the connection had been poor, and I had to repeat myself.
Sometimes he had sounded distracted, and I had assumed he was tired.
I had never imagined that there might be something else behind that distance.
I closed the notebook.
I didn't want to turn every memory into a question.
If I started doing that, I would never finish.
When Ryan came downstairs, he found me folding the girls' blankets.
"Do you want me to finish those?" he asked.
"I'm almost done."
He stood beside the basket.
"Claire, can we talk about something?"
I put a blanket on the pile.
"About what?"
"About what happens now."
I looked at him.
"I thought we were trying to get through today."
"We are. I just don't want you thinking I'm waiting for you to decide everything by yourself."
I folded another blanket.
"I don't know what happens now."
"I know."
"Do you?"
He pulled a chair away from the table and sat down.
"I know I can't ask you to trust me just because I came home."
I stopped folding.
It was the first time he had said it that plainly.
He continued before I could answer.
"I know ending things with Simone doesn't make what I did disappear. And I know you might decide you can't stay married to me."
The words landed heavily between us.
I had spent so much time thinking about whether he would leave again that I had not fully considered what it would mean if I chose to leave him.
The thought frightened me.
Not because I believed I couldn't survive without him.
I had already learned how to survive long nights alone with two babies.
I was afraid of the changes.
I was afraid of moving the girls between homes.
I was afraid of explaining why their father and I no longer lived together.
I was afraid of the possibility that staying might hurt us in ways I couldn't yet see.
There was no easy choice waiting for me.
"I don't want you to keep saying things that sound like you're preparing me to leave," I told him.
"I'm not trying to push you away."
"Then don't make me feel like I have to comfort you about the possibility that I might."
He looked down at his hands.
"I didn't realize I was doing that."
"That's part of the problem, Ryan. You keep saying you didn't realize."
He nodded.
"I hear you."
I wasn't sure whether he truly did.
But I was beginning to understand that I could not measure every conversation by how much better I felt afterward.
Sometimes a conversation only made the truth clearer.
I put the last blanket into the basket.
"Did you tell anyone about Simone?" I asked.
He looked up.
"No."
"Not a friend? Not someone you work with?"
"No."
"Why?"
He rubbed his palms together.
"I was ashamed."
I almost laughed, but there was no humor in me.
"You had someone to talk to while you were away. You just didn't tell me."
He didn't answer.
"Did you tell her things about me?" I asked.
"Some things."
"What things?"
He shifted in his chair.
"That we had been struggling with the distance. That I was worried about coming home and not knowing how to fit back into everything."
I stared at him.
"We have two babies, Ryan. I wasn't expecting you to walk through the door and immediately know every part of our routine."
"I know."
"Did you tell her that I was difficult? That I didn't understand you? That I was making your life miserable?"
"No. I didn't say those things."
"But you told her enough about our marriage that she became part of it."
He swallowed.
"Yes."
I looked toward the nursery.
The door was open a few inches.
I could see the edge of Mia's crib.
"That's what I can't get past," I said. "You took something that belonged between us and made room for someone else in it."
"I know."
I shook my head.
"I don't think you do yet."
He leaned forward.
"Then tell me what you need me to understand."
I thought about the question.
I could have told him to apologize again.
I could have asked him to explain every conversation he had shared with Simone.
I could have demanded to know how many times he had looked at his phone and chosen not to call me.
Some of those questions might matter later.
But I was tired of being the person who had to discover each new part of the truth.
"I need you to stop making me pull honesty out of you one question at a time," I said.
He went quiet.
"If there's something I should know, tell me. Don't wait until I guess the right question."
"Okay."
"And don't tell me something just because you think it's what I want to hear."
"I won't."
I held his gaze.
"You can't promise me that nothing else will hurt me. You can promise to stop hiding behind silence."
He nodded.
"I can do that."
I wanted to believe him.
I also knew that believing him was not a decision I could force myself to make.
That evening, we ate at the kitchen table.
Ryan heated soup.
I made toast.
The twins slept in their seats nearby, waking occasionally to make small noises that had become familiar to both of us.
We talked about the girls.
Ava had started holding her head up for longer periods.
Mia had begun making a soft sound that almost resembled a laugh.
Ryan asked me to show him the feeding notebook.
I passed it across the table.
He read the entries slowly.
"I wish I'd been here for all of this," he said.
I looked at him.
"So do I."
He touched the edge of the notebook.
"I missed a lot."
"Yes."
He waited for me to soften the answer.
I didn't.
Not because I wanted to punish him.
I simply didn't want to make the truth easier for him than it had been for me.
After dinner, he washed the bowls while I wiped the table.
We worked quietly.
When he finished, he dried his hands and looked toward the family photograph hanging near the hallway.
It showed the two of us before the twins were born.
Ryan had his arm around my shoulders.
I was laughing at something outside the frame.
We looked younger.
We looked certain.
"I remember that day," he said.
"So do I."
"You were laughing because I couldn't get the camera to work."
"You kept pressing the wrong button."
He smiled faintly.
"I thought I knew what I was doing."
"You usually did."
The smile faded.
I wished I hadn't said it that way.
But I also knew I couldn't spend every minute protecting him from the sadness of what he had done.
He looked at the photograph for another moment.
"Do you still want that life with me?"
The question made my throat tighten.
I could have given him the answer he wanted.
I could have said yes and watched the relief spread across his face.
Instead, I told him the truth.
"I want the life I thought we were building."
He looked at me.
"I don't know yet whether I can build it with you now."
He lowered his head.
"That's fair."
I wasn't sure it was fair.
Nothing about the situation felt fair.
But it was honest.
Later, when the twins were settled for the night, I sat alone in the bedroom with the feeding notebook open on my lap.
I looked at the dates.
At the times.
At the small notes about bottles and naps.
Those pages held a record of my life while Ryan was away.
They did not tell me what he had done.
They did not explain why he had done it.
But they reminded me of something I needed to remember.
I had been living my life, too.
I had been learning how to care for our daughters.
I had been finding strength in ordinary days.
I had been getting through things I once thought would be impossible.
Whatever happened to our marriage, that part of me would not disappear.
I closed the notebook and placed it on my bedside table.
For the first time since the harbor, I thought about the future without picturing only two possibilities.
I did not have to forgive Ryan immediately.
I did not have to leave him immediately.
I could watch what happened next.
I could ask questions.
I could protect my daughters and myself while I decided what I was willing to rebuild.
That wasn't a final answer.
But it was something I could live with for another day.
*END PART 10**
Click here to continue reading: PART 11: When Ryan Tried to Return to Our Old Routine, I Learned That Forgiveness Could Not Be Measured by How Quickly I Let Him Close
I Thought Our First Family Reunion Would Be the Happiest Morning of My Life Until I Saw Who Was Waiting Beside My Husband
Part 10 of 20
